Combined sales of Busan's top firms top W50tr for first time

Thirty-one Busan-based companies were included in Korea's top 1,000 firms by sales last year, three more than the previous year, according to a new report.

The Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry said Tuesday that the combined sales of those 31 companies reached 51.11 trillion won ($38.1 billion), surpassing 50 trillion won for the first time and rising 41.1 percent, or 14.9 trillion won, from a year earlier. Busan firms' share of total sales among the top 1,000 nationwide also expanded from 1.2 percent to 1.6 percent.

The chamber attributed the surge largely to the relocation of three major shipping companies' headquarters to Busan, in line with the government's policy to develop the city as a maritime capital. The additions of HMM, K-LNG — formerly SK Shipping — and H-Line Shipping, all of which moved their head offices from Seoul to Busan, significantly expanded the regional firms' overall scale.

HMM in particular posted sales of 10.72 trillion won last year, ranking 60th nationwide and first among Busan firms, becoming the first Busan company to exceed 10 trillion won in sales. The result also marks the first time since Renault Korea placed 94th in 2019 that a Busan firm has broken into the national top 100. K-LNG (354th nationwide) and H-Line Shipping (431st) also cracked the top 500, with sales of 1.54 trillion won and 1.29 trillion won, respectively. Together, the three shipping companies recorded combined sales of 13.55 trillion won, accounting for 90.9 percent of the total sales increase among Busan firms.

The remaining 28 Busan companies, excluding the three shipping firms, posted combined sales of 37.57 trillion won, up 3.7 percent from the same group a year earlier at 36.22 trillion won — slightly above the 3.4 percent sales growth rate recorded across all top-1,000 firms nationwide.

BNK Financial Group and Bizco were newly added to the top-1,000 list. BNK Financial Group saw sales jump 87.3 percent year-on-year to 706.2 billion won, driven by expanded dividends from subsidiaries, vaulting 538 spots from 1,290th to 752nd. Bizco, a manufacturing partner and retail distributor for Asics, climbed to 977th with sales of 527.7 billion won, up 34.8 percent, riding growth in the running and wellness market.

Five of the top 10 companies by sales growth rate were in the finance and insurance sector. Government policies to invigorate capital markets, combined with a buoyant stock market, boosted securities income and trading volumes, driving sharp sales increases at BNK Financial Group (up 87.3 percent), BNK Investment and Securities (48.6 percent), Korea Exchange (20.3 percent), IM Securities (18.7 percent) and BNK Capital (9.1 percent). Air Busan, by contrast, saw sales fall 17.3 percent as flight operations shrank in the aftermath of the aircraft fire at Gimhae Airport in January last year, pushing its ranking down 123 places and making it the only Busan firm to post an operating loss. Steel producers Daehan Steel, Sewoon Steel and Kiswire also slipped in the rankings amid a slump in the construction sector.

By industry, manufacturing accounted for the largest share with 10 companies, or 32.3 percent of the total, followed by transportation and warehousing and finance and insurance, each with seven. The share of non-manufacturing firms rose to 67.7 percent from 60.7 percent the previous year, a 7 percentage-point increase that points to a structural shift in the regional economy toward shipping and finance.

"We need to spread the growth effects of the shipping and financial industries across the broader regional economy and strengthen the investment and growth foundations of local companies, so that these results do not remain a one-time phenomenon," a researcher at the Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry said.